School speed limits are unnecessarily complicated. So many times I’ll pass a school speed limit sign and sometimes it’s just “while flashing” which is easy to understand quickly. However, other times it has in very small print conditions such as during certain times or during weekdays or even the really vague “when children present”. Sometimes I won’t notice all of the print before I pass the sign, so I’ll just do the slower school speed limit and the driver behind me starts tailgaiting me because I’m going under the limit. So I suggest instead of having these limits be conditional school speed limits, they should just be the normal limits all the time. It wouldn’t hurt people to slow down when kids aren’t present, so just make the speed limit reduced all the time on roads around the school. Additionally, if this was the case, drivers would be used to going slow and wouldn’t forget to slow down during school hours
Definitely an unpopular opinion, so I’ll give you the vote.
That said, of you can’t be bothered to slow down to read the sign where kids can be, maybe you aren’t ready to drive.
Thank you for your contribution
I prefer this over “when school children are present”.
Like I still don’t know what that means. Is it during pickup/dropoff? Is it all day on school days? Is it only if I see a kid? Do they have school on certain holidays?
I guess I’d prefer a ‘when flashing’ light instead.
As a teen driver, I got a ticket in a school zone two blocks from an elementary school “when children [were] present.” The children in question were my high school peers waiting at a bus stop across the street two hours before the elementary school opened.
After the ticket, I accepted that I definitely violated the letter of the law, but it felt like catching a stray bullet since the teens who made my speed illegal were so obviously not the folks the sign was put up to protect.
It’s not mysterious. It’s quite literally ‘when children are present.’ It’s not the job of a sign to look around and drive for you.
In my city they solve this issue simply by making a sign that says “drive this speed when light is blinking”, otherwise normal speed limit applies.
They could change playground speed limits - if you have those - to “drive this slower speed when streetlights are not lit”, and solve the other interpretive mess.
That’s not what OP is saying.
They still want to slow down. That said you are correct that this means they wouldn’t need to read the sign.
I agree, but in some states like where I live mow they have some weird school set ups. Speed limit is 55mph on the road if it isn’t during school start/end. So while I think it’d be fine if people went 20 there all the time, there would likely be a lot of backlash from people saying 'i could to 60 there every day for the last 20 years on my way to and from work (it leads to a major interstate) and now you want me to go 20!
Honestly it is just a poor setup for the school. Should have built a road around the back where you directed all the traffic
You know, I was about to say that we should go back to no school zones like in the 80s since the speed limit was always just 30 around school zones anyway and people had to slow anyway when school let out because of all the traffic.
And I was wondering why school zones were created in the first place since there was no problem to fix. But now I remember that schools were once always in residential areas. But with school zones today, they can stick them on airport runways if they want to.
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